Fifteen thousand miles, thirty plus hours of travel time, four airports, three different aircraft and we made it to Perth, as did our luggage, the latter being almost as important as the former. This first leg of our trip just eked out our trips to South Africa to become the longest journey in both time and distance we’ve endured. It also, surprisingly, turned out to be one of the easiest.
I booked this one so that we could fly the longest leg, fifteen hours, on the new Boeing 787 Dreamliner. This airplane was supposed to be designed to make long distance flying easier on people and reduce jet lag. I must say it did. Kathy and I both had the longest, uninterrupted sleep we have ever had on an airplane and we arrived in Sydney as fresh as we could be. Which was good because we had a three-hour layover and another six hours in the air to get to Perth.
All we had to do now was to wait for our friends Wayne and Leah Hoover to arrive and the fun would begin. Dinner was set for Long Chim, a world class Thai restaurant by David Thompson of Nahm fame, at 6:00 PM. Needless to say, the food was fantastic Thai street food washed down by an equally fabulous Aussie Riesling. Facing a 7:30 AM departure the next morning for an all-day trip to the Margaret River Wine Region, we retired to our respective rooms satiated and looking forward to the next day's trip.
Fortified by an amazing breakfast, we met our driver Ed and headed south for the three and one-half hour drive to our first winery, Vasse Felix, the oldest in the Region. I don’t know if it’s part of a Divine plan or if Bacchus was really a location scout for the wine industry, but it seems wine regions are always in the most beautiful areas of any country we have visited. Margaret River was no exception. After Vasse Felix, which disappointed, we visited Cullen, excellent, Will’s Domain, very good and were served an amazing lunch and finally ended up at Leeuwin for a tasting of their Art Series wines, which were all fabulous. After that it was a quick visit to the amazing Southern Australia Coast and a quick trip through the small town of Margaret River, think Calistoga in the ‘90’s.
We arrived back in Perth at 8:00 PM and were just in time for our dinner reservations at Post, an Italian restaurant, in our hotel, which was again excellent. In case you are wondering, food and wine play an important part in this trip.
The next morning we were to do a tour of the Perth and its surroundings, which the Hoover’s did do, but Kathy and I saw a different side of Perth.
Suffice it to say that the emergency room at the Royal Perth Hospital was not in our plans the evening before, but things happen. I awoke that morning with a gastrointestinal issue that couldn’t be solved with over the counter preparations. So our driver Ed took us to the Royal Perth for a close-up look at a side of Perth the Hoover’s would not see.
Suffice it to say that it was not life-threatening. The folks in the emergency room were wonderful and things worked out in the end.
We were able to meet the Hoover’s in time to be transported to our next hotel and another wonderful dinner later that evening at Rock Pool. There we all dined on different varieties of Aussie fish all cooked over an oak grill including the difficult to pronounce Dhu fish, but that’s a story for another time.
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